Amazon and its Great Failure: Books Prevail
On Tuesday, July 5, 1994, Jeff Bezos, a scrawny 30-year old electrical and computer engineer from New Mexico (via Houston, Miami, Princeton and Wall Street) filed with the State of Washington a terrible name called Cadabra, Inc. If you read it out loud, it sounds like Cadaver, which is precisely what a lawyer misheard a few months later. Bezos then changed the name to Amazon.com, Inc. The company started out of Bezos' garage in Bellevue, Washington. In 1994, Bezos wanted to name his online store Relentless.com, a site that still redirects to Amazon--a domain name that is a testament to Bezos' ambition and Amazon's dominance.
Bezos started his journey in Amazon as wanting to be the biggest bookstore in the world. What started with Douglas Hofstader's Fluid Concepts and Creative Analogies: Computer Models of Fundamental Mechanisms of Thought, Amazon now sells more than 33 million books, with 23 million paperbacks, 8 million hardcovers and a little over 1 million Kindle books.
The last part is probably the most interesting.The Kindle has one job: reading. Sure, over the years, it has evolved into Kindle Fire, or Kindle Fire HD, which function more as cheap tablets than an ékhörö (Nepali for "one-at-a-time", or in this case, uni-functional--made up word). The first Kindle was launched in 2007, and was showcased in Newsweek. The article was titled "Books Aren't Dead. (They're Just Going Digital.)" and features Jeff Bezos creepily looking at the screen from behind a Kindle. Readers the next week had some strong words to say: "Pointing and clicking will never hold the same satisfaction as browsing the shelves at a library or bookstore..." says one reader from Ohio. Another lamented that ebooks would not be appropriate for books in architecture or art. Yet almost 13 years later, Kindle books still thrive. But do they prevail?
A working paper from Harvard Business School examines a shift in independent bookstores that have reinvented themselves. Ryan Raffaelli, PhD., argues that independent, community-based brick-and-mortar bookstores can compete against big box retail, such as Amazon. The paper cites that Amazon.com's emergence led to a decline in independent bookstores and many predicted that the industry would never recover. Between 2009 and 2018, however, Raffaelli cites an American Booksellers Association report that stated there was a 4% growth in the industry. That's a nice and steady growth rate for any company and industry.
Kindle's dominance is not something to scoff at. It certainly dominates the eReader market with the highest market share. Since 2007, Kindles have had ten generations and the prices fell from the steep $399 to almost $50 in recent times (I bought mine for $50).The Kindle ecosystem thrives in multiple levels. Its Kindle Store is encoded with Amazon's proprietary formats. Users can access Kindle reading materials and even features Kindle Unlimited, a monthly subscription-service that has over one million eBooks. Kindle's Publishing platform has made any Nancy or Harry an author or publisher.
Kindle is not without criticism. In 2009, it famously erased George Orwell's Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-Four from Kindle devices. The obvious scoff aside, this revealed a deeper insight of Kindle's dark Terms and Conditions. The books on Kindle aren't actually owned by the users, but are rather licensed in a non-exclusive right format. It seems to me that this is basically means you have a license that can be revoked. When you buy book in the store--you own it. If you want to donate it to the library, you can. If you want to lend it to your friend, you certainly can. If you want to re-sell it, you certainly can again.
Kindle and eReading platforms also serve as a form of hoarding. When I'm finished with a book that I hated, I don't have to keep staring at it in my library. I can pass it on to someone else so that they can be miserable. With eReaders and Kindles there's a perpetual digital history. There is no moving on. Kindle books lurk in your library like an ex that would not let go, peering at you like Jeff Bezos peers into your soul in the Newsweek cover.
Is convenience worth not being able to ever let go?
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